Discussion questions for The Encampment:
1. Miss Oliver’s School for Girls is a prestigious boarding school in Connecticut, with acres of land to its property and only the highest caliber of teachers employed there. How would you describe the school community’s general view of themselves? How do others view the school?
2. Consider the culture and perspective of people in Miss Oliver’s School as represented in the book, from the tradition of not wearing jackets in the cold to the ritual gathering and conversation practice at dinner. Do you consider the school and its values to be progressive or conservative? Why?
3. Sylvia and Christopher both feel like outsiders in their community. Discuss how Sylvia and Christopher can relate to each other in the role of an outsider. In what ways are their experiences shared? In what ways are they different?
4. Though she and Sylvia are generally in agreement about things, Elizabeth is often at odds with her friend throughout the book. Why do you think Elizabeth and Sylvia are best friends? Where do they differ in their beliefs and in their actions? Why do you think Elizabeth and Christopher personally feel more comfortable with Sylvia than with each other?
5. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) “develops in some people who have experienced a shocking, scary, or dangerous event.” As a veteran of war, Christopher’s PTSD manifests in tangible ways that express his fear, anxiety, and trauma that have carried over since being deployed in Iraq. Recount the times Christopher’s PTSD inserts itself in the book. How often was he noticed when he experiences the symptoms of the disorder? What is his reaction to himself during these times?
6. Homelessness affects a great number of people in America, including veterans like Christopher. Christopher’s personal situation illustrates how even having family with homes may not necessarily protect someone from becoming homeless. What are some factors that may lead to homelessness? What resources do you think are available to homeless people?
7. Compare Christopher’s life as a homeless person to his life at Adelaide’s house, and the change in his thoughts and feelings. Neither the street nor Adelaide’s house is a comfortable choice, so what drives him to go to Adelaide’s in the first place? Why do you think he leaves and then later returns to her house?
8. Reread the passage on page 15, when Sylvia thinks of Christopher while in class and asks herself, “Did he see another girl in her face?” Then reread the passage on page 53, when Christopher dreams Sylvia visits him and asks, “What do you want? Who do you want me to be for you?” How do these two passages drive the novel? How do they contribute to the theme of identity and forgiveness that Sylvia and Christopher struggle with?
9. Rachel and Sylvia’s relationship is filled with deep love yet also great tension throughout the book. Why do you think Sylvia lies and hides certain things from her mother? How does Rachel react, especially since she suspects Sylvia’s not being completely truthful?
10. Think about your own relationship with a parent figure. How would you feel in that person’s position, and what would you do?
11. During her suspension from school, Sylvia goes to Detroit with Aunt M and helps out with small community-organized movements. What insight did she gain from her time there? How does her experience clash with her life at Miss Oliver’s, considering she came from and later returned there after Detroit?
12. Sylvia and Elizabeth’s actions for Christopher eventually leads to a forced public apology in front of the entire school during Morning Meeting. If you were in their place, would you have apologized? Why?
13. At the time, Elizabeth and Sylvia both believed in their actions to steal and lie for Christopher, yet the outcome of the Morning Meeting with their public apology ended differently for the two of them. How do their decisions affect their lives? Do you think they regret their decisions? Do you think they see each other differently after the meeting?
14. The Encampment touches upon several subjects, from social issues of race and ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gentrification, homelessness, education, and mental health, to more personal struggles with identity, family, and friends. Which of these, if any, were you concerned about in high school? What are some issues that are important to you now, and how have you contributed to or actively engaged with them?
Q: Where did the idea for The Encampment come from?
A: One of the starting places was the horror of homelessness—of human beings, like you and me, sleeping on sidewalks, getting their food in dumpsters, in the richest country in the world. What is it like to be that person, especially when he or she is remembering the life before whatever happened to make that person a castaway? We stop at red lights and try not to look at them. Or we give them some money, maybe say Hello or God Bless. But it rarely goes further.
The book began with Christopher Triplett, the uninvited guest who changes everything simply by showing up, by being there, by not going away. I was sure someone from the school would step up, do what’s right, and help him. I was sure it wouldn’t be the school itself. Helping the homeless wasn’t the school’s mission—at least no one thought it was. And when I got the idea that the way two girls would feed and clothe the homeless person would cause them to break the only two school rules for which the consequence was expulsion, the story came to me.
Q: What made you decide to bring homelessness as a forefront issue of this novel about teenagers in a wealthy school?
A: Living in Oakland, I see homeless people every day, almost everywhere I go. There are degrees of connection and disconnection that immediately happen between people who are homeless and people who are not. We naturally take on a perspective that agrees most with our own circumstances, but novels can explore more fluidity in the role the reader and writer can take. For Sylvia, she has the marvelous ability to continue to be herself and at the same time be Christopher, thus charging herself with empathy for him. If there is any disgust, it won’t be hers for him—it will be his self-disgust, which she will have sufficient distance to understand empathetically.
Q: After writing two novels set in Miss Oliver’s School for Girls, what is it that made you want to revisit the world?
A: There are so many facets on a school to explore still. Through a long career working in schools whose clients are ambitious families, I grew increasingly disturbed by the harm done to students and the education they were receiving by the obsession about getting into the “right” college. I had finished writing The Encampment months before the recent scandal of parents manufacturing bribes and falsifying their children’s credentials, and though most parents would never step that far out of bounds, the scandal does signify the power of the obsession. I’d like to ask every parent that if, God forbid, you knew your son or daughter would live only a little while after graduating from secondary school, would you deny him or her the experience of that school? What would you want that experience to be? I believe the answer would clarify that secondary school, let alone middle and elementary school, is too early a stage in life to be a careerist.
Q: Tell us a little about your writing process. Do you use outlines, or do you just write as you go?
A: No outlines. I have a general idea of where the characters are heading. When I come to the end of a chapter, I will sometimes outline the next. But when I actually start to write that chapter, I lose the outline. It becomes a way of getting me started, and that’s all.
I actually didn’t know what the story required, nor what I wanted to do, until I actually started writing—that is to say, recording the visualization of someone doing something, or thinking something, or saying something to somebody else. I knew eventually, but I didn’t start knowing.
Q: Do you have any advice for writers?
A: I feel presumptuous giving advice, but here it goes. When you are stuck, write something anyway. Power through. The results will probably be terrible, but you will have something to work with the next day when you return. Get hard-headed, severe criticism of your work before you submit. Expect that criticism to be harsh, that it will reveal critical flaws. That attitude will enable you to write a better next draft, without first having to feel defensive. If you can afford it, hire an outstanding freelance editor so that the acquisition editor to whom you submit receives your very best work. If accepted, that editor will do another edit and help you make it even better.